Contrasts

What was I thinking. I did not bring rain paints. I wore my ancient, squeaky hiking boots that long ago stopped being waterproof. No plastic cover for my camera. And yet I followed the trail up coyote hill, despite the fact that misty sprays of rain soon turned into real showers.

It was the fault of all those herons, flying constantly in one direction our coming from there, ever since I had spotted them in the ponds. It was the lure of distant noise, increasingly louder when I approached a stand of tall trees at the western rim of the wetlands preserve.

I had found the heron rookery, an accumulation of nests in the fir trees, chicks squawking loudly, parents announcing their arrival with raspy, penetrating voices.

I crouched under a canopy of bushes away from the path, trying to get out of the downpour, camera peeking through the inside of my coat, unbuttoned in one place to let the lens through. I was quite a distance away, separated by a marsh, vision blurry from all the moisture in the air, in awe of the constant action.

Look closely how many gather in one tree.

Parents flying in to feed the babies, then reversing roles with those who had stood guard. A cacophony of bird calls announcing or assuaging need.

And then it went all quiet. As if the world stood still. Birds calmed, stoically standing in the rain, or crouching in the nests. All I could hear, all of a sudden, was the relentless drumming of the rain on the leaves above my head. One of those moments were your heart expands, with gratitude, while your soul is struck with slivers of disquietude.

In this week’s blogs I juxtaposed forms with lines, isolation with connectedness, and now, today, the natural with the staged. The heron photographs were snapshots, badly taken under challenging circumstances with layperson equipment. They caught a moment in time, captured as is in nature in all its blurry glory.

Contrast this with the work of Kylli Sparre, a young Estonian photographer, whose work is technically flawless, delightful in its creativity, and as choreographed as any of the ballets she ever danced in (having given up a career as a dancer for photography and photoshop manipulation.) In fact I think that’s why she came to mind when I was watching the choreographed approaches and departures of the herons in the rookery, quietly fluid during departure, loudly proclaiming their arrival. They really are among the more elegantly moving birds, as long as they don’t open their mouths and disturb the mood with their screeching.

Sparre has had a fast and pretty steep professional ascent – just look at the accumulation of awards, including the 2014 Sony world photography award, and the invitations to show in arrived venues. I appreciate the combination of painterly sensibility in her staging, her ability to invoke fairy-tales, or at least fairy tale moods, and her embrace of modern technology to alter and manipulate the photographed image.

I think, though, that what speaks to me most is the sense of motion about to invite a dramatic development, the very next move leading to a denouement.

That is even contained in the images where there’s perfect stillness, as paradoxical as that sounds.

There is a sense of eeriness, just as I experienced one hidden under a hedgerow, seemingly the only human on a planet filled with screaming birds who suddenly fell silent. Similarities then as well, not just contrast. At least in the evoked emotions.

Music today picks up the fairy-tale theme – von Zemlinsky’s fantasy for orchestra, The Mermaid.

(“Die Seejungfrau has an unusual history. Having heard the latest Richard Strauss, Ein Heldenleben, conducted by the composer in Vienna, Zemlinsky determined to create an equally grandiloquent tone poem of his own. Possibly he settled on his program, “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen — a fairy tale of a lover who fails to secure her intended — in response to losing his own intended, Alma Schindler, to the greater charms of Gustav Mahler. At any rate nobody discusses the music without mentioning this”. Ref.)

Fairytale Friday

Your turn to write. I will hand you the setting and characters, and a short refresher on narrative arc.

Before you pick up your pencil, check on the important parts of beginning, middle, and ending and don’t forget to make use of sequencing words (first, so, then, next, after that, finally) ….at least that’s what I hear they teach in 2nd grade these days.

Setting: a garden, an enchanted wood with a white giant guardian of the path, a clearing and a mysterious pond with golden flowers.

Beginning: good for exposition: introduce the actors and the main conflict.

The heroine and her mother:

Middle: rising action can enhance the conflict – surprises, complications, challenges….eventually getting to the greatest tension, forcing a critical choice.

A magic flower and a magical pathway that narrows:

End: path towards resolution, implied change, punishment, reward. Or just a big gaping hole that leaves the reader wondering….

Alternatively, you can watch Kurt Vonnegut explain it with delicious wit.

Arcs have multiple and predictable directionality, as A.I. discovered by crunching through thousands of narratives, in case you hadn’t already figured it out yourselves during a life time of reading.

The Heroine’s friend and her mother and father

1. Rags to Riches (rise)

2. Riches to Rags (fall)

3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise)

4. Icarus (rise then fall)

Villains: A sneaky muskrat and a thief of the (golden)goose egg – loudly protested:

5. Cinderella (rise then fall then rise)

6. Oedipus (fall then rise then fall)

Various supportive characters and sidekicks:

A Whitethroat (warbler) planning the next move

Compose! Just make it a happy ending – the little heroine fell out of her nest in my garden. She deserves the fledgling in a hole arc!

And here is a gorgeous operatic fairy tale: Strauss’ Frau ohne Schatten with English subtitles.

All this to prove we cared.

Lots of birds on yesterday’s walk, searching for and bringing back nesting materials, some birds in their bright mating colors already.

I was reminded of a Robert Frost poem, The Exposed Nest, that provides for me at its core a sense of unease around unresolved moral issues.

The poet sees his young companion, perhaps his child, trying to build a shelter out of grass and ferns. It’s not just play but the desire to protect a ground-nest full of fledglings that was accidentally disturbed by someone mowing the meadow. The innocent birds are left defenseless – you do want to protect them from “too much world” (and all the danger that implies,) but the very act of building a shelter might frighten the parent bird away, leading them to abandon their brood.

“We saw the risk we took in doing good, but dared not spare to do the best we could though harm should come of it…” – all this to prove we cared. ”

There is this sense of moral obligation, but also of having to make a choice between errors of omission and error of commission. Damned if you do and damned of you don’t.

Prove that we care – to whom? To nature? The young child who needs a model? Some higher power that set moral standards? The self that has an internalized vision of what it means to be a good person?

In the poem they decide to fashion a shelter. Then all is left hanging in the air, an irritatingly incomplete gesture. The narrator doesn’t go back to check on the fledglings’ survival, he turns to other things or conveniently claims to have forgotten if they did or did not return. Clearly there is a defensiveness against accepting the outcome of one’s action, should one have made the wrong choice. We fed our pretense or our hope to be “good,” but that’s enough. Let’s not dwell on potentially dead, abandoned birds…. since we suspect that’ll be the outcome in a world that is cruel to the innocent. (The poem was written in the middle of WW I, after all.)

Uneasy parallels to our current situation as well where we have a chance to alter some that ails the world beyond pandemic: we need to make risky choices, unable to predict the outcome. In contrast to the narrator, we do have to face the results, though, unable to turn to other things since our decisions affect us all, not just some creatures we can keep out of our sight. Our choices are not just some gestures, demanded by our need to appear moral – if they are immoral choices, we will all be exposed to the harm that comes from them. And (feigned) ignorance after a bit of initial commitment stands in the way of finding solutions. If we don’t know what needs to be handled and how to fight for it, we are doomed to suffer the consequences. Mull that while trying to photograph a Northern Harrier…

The Exposed Nest

Robert Frost – 1874-1963

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But ’twas no make-believe with you to-day,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
‘Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once—could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might our meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven’t any memory—have you?—
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.

Luckily the walk provided sights that led to more hopeful thoughts as well.

Birds that have pretty safe nests:

Fearless hares

And optimistic taggers

Here is a beautiful Sonata by Delius, composed in the same year as the poem was written. The cellist is outstanding.

Antidote

So here I am wrecking my head over what I could possible offer this week to cheer us all up and distract us from all things virus-related for a measly five days. Not going to mention Corona once, at least not directly. Wish me luck.

(And if the options below have you rolling your eyes, at least admit that the photographs are pretty nifty given that they were taken while I was writing, through the window onto my balcony – the doves make regular appearances these days, drinking from the dish in the middle of rain…)

So, what shall we discuss? The Guardian offers antidotes, as a daily regimen, but honestly, do they excite you?

Looks like I am reduced to posting an animal video, good grief.

However, it perfectly captures my current vocalizing….

Maybe I’ll find something slightly more sensible, as always, with music.

And here it is: Schubert’s Die Taubenpost (Carrier Pigeon). It was the last song he wrote in his life, part of Schwanengesang D 957, a collection of songs published posthumously. Hah, got the education in, anyhow! Here is the text, check out the very last stanza: Longing…. the messenger of constancy. THAT is the concept to think about today!

Sky

“Dancing is generally believed to be a normal part of motor development …. and thwarts aggression, relieves tension, and strengthens the pair bond.”

Yup. Oh, to dance again. Turns out, that sentence included two words I replaced with dots, namely the words: for cranes.

I learned about the use of cranes’ dancing at the website of the International Crane Foundation, the only place in the world where all 15 species of cranes can be observed. In Baraboo, southern Wisconsin, no less. Hard for me to imagine to see these birds in exhibits in a refuge, though, rather than in the wild, where they represent such freedom.

I have written about them before, with a few scientific details. Today I want you to see them through the lens of a poet. Linda Hogan is currently the Chickasaw Nation’s Writer in Residence and lives in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.

I have introduced her work here before, a poem about herons, I believe, since her concern for ecological matters, cultural heritage and dispossession of Native Americans is, as my regular readers know, something I share (as part of my documentary film focus for Necessity – Oil, Water and Climate Resistance – there will be an on-line screening for Earth Day – check the link.)

Others more knowledgable than I have also shown admiration of Hogan’s writing: she is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the American Book Award, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

The Sandhills

BY LINDA HOGAN
The language of cranes
we once were told
is the wind. The wind
is their method,
their current, the translated story
of life they write across the sky.
Millions of years
they have blown here
on ancestral longing,
their wings of wide arrival,
necks long, legs stretched out
above strands of earth
where they arrive
with the shine of water,
stories, interminable
language of exchanges
descended from the sky
and then they stand,
earth made only of crane
from bank to bank of the river
as far as you can see
the ancient story made new.

This concludes a week where meadows, fields, flowers, birds and sky were all still to be seen on walks, and brought to you as tokens of nature that exist independent of our human worries. Reminders, too, that there are still many pleasures to be had.

And talking about pleasure:

Fields

There they were in the fields, this Monday. Hundreds and hundreds of them. So much for social distancing….

Usually at this time of year Canada Geese would gather for the migration back North. Many of them now stay here, having found both food sources and breeding grounds that suit them. They are really amazing in what they pull off, once in flight. They can fly up to 1000 km a day, which means they could fly around the world in 48 days, if they’d wish to. But they wish to stay.

Looking at them reminded me of Inuit art that has depicted them for ages.

Traditional stencil,

Lukta Qiatsuk, *Canada Geese Nesting Ground*, 1959

modern stone cut and stencil,

Killiktte Killiktee, *Canada Geese*, 2016

Litographs,

Kananginak Pootoogook, Canada Geese Mating, 1976

Carvings,

Acrylic and ink on paper,

Benjamin Chee Chee *Goose in Flight 1977*

And these artworks, in turn, reminded me of a small, riveting exhibit at the Portland Art Museum that I had a chance to explore earlier this year before everything shut down. Akunnittinni: A Kinngait Family Portrait exhibited the works of three Inuk women, grandmother, mother and daughter, Pitseolak Ashoona, Napachie Pootoogook, and Annie Pootoogook respectively. Their work was intimate, direct, jarring. They described the world as seen and experienced by them, providing autobiographical narratives as much as a glimpse of historical and cultural episodes that taught me much about Inuit culture and the resilience of women in a violent world, violence to which the youngest artist succumbed in 2016, and which was born by the older ones, during a time where husbands would rent out their wives by the hour to traveling sailors.

*Trading Women for Supplies* by Napachie Pootoogook, Ink,(1997/98).

It was fascinating to see three generations describe their lives, and display an astute summary of the mundane, the quotidian, the cultural influences of later years on the first nation lives. PAM’s Center for Contemporary Native Art picked a winner (the exhibition was curated by Andrea R. Hanley (Navajo.) I will be eager to go back to the smaller galleries, once the museum is open again, and let me be surprised at what I find.

Oh, to be a bird, and just leave it all behind, hide in that big gaggle in the safety of numbers, wander through the fields with less of a sense of past or future and just living in the moment of grazing. There is some continuity for them as well, though – they mate for life! And geese, believe it or not, often live for up to 24 years.

And here is Mother Goose….

And here is a bonus Ravel – really a much more interesting piece, and we can just pretend we walk along some fields in Spain….

Swallows

I have always liked swallows. They were constant companions from late spring through fall in our village, nesting in corners under the barn roofs, often in large numbers. Barn swallows are quite social, attack in groups, if they feel their mud abodes are threatened, and they sing their heart out to attract a mate. They swoop and fly fast, doing all kinds of acrobatic maneuvers to catch the insects that they feed on while in the air, with unending chirpy commentary. Mating up there as well, must be a fleeting pleasure.

The old lore of “when swallows fly high, the weather will be dry,” lost its magical prediction power when my scientist father explained to me, early on, that of course swallows change the level at which they fly depending on weather, if you think where their food source will be: when it’s warm, outside thermal activity carries bubbles of air up and with it the insects that swallows hunt. Convection is even stronger near heated surfaces of sunlit buildings. If it rains or colder weather brings winds, the insects seek shelter under trees and bushes, with the swallows following in lower swoops.

Well, magic could still be had elsewhere. One of my favorite fairy tale books of Hans Christian Andersen tales had color plates depicting an old fashioned Thumbelina flying South to a warm, sunny, fairy tale land on the back of her rescuer, a neon-blue swallow, only to meet a prince her size and live happily ever after. Things had seemed pretty hopeless after having been abducted and given in service or forced marriage to all kinds of threatening creatures, but hey, swallow to the rescue. I longed more for the trip than the prince, all of age what, 6 or 7?

The tales containing swallows changed over time, becoming much darker when reading turned from fairy tales to Greek mythology. Remember the myth of two sisters, Philomela and Procne? Procne was married to King Tereus, a political alliance forced by her father, an Athenian king. Tereus coveted her sister, raped her and cut her tongue out so she could not tell. She managed to put the story into her weavings which were sent to her sister. The two sought revenge, unwilling to let the crime and the silencing of female voices stand – something that impressed me tremendously as a teenager, even though it included infanticide of the king’s son with Procne, and feeding Tereus the child, unbeknownst to him. The glimpse of justice served by two strong women refusing to be victims almost made up for having to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses.…

When Tereus tries to persecute the sisters, they ask the Gods for help and are changed into a nightingale (Philomela) and a swallow (Procne) respectively, voices forever heard in beautiful song. (Never mind that female nightingales in real life are mute, and it is the males who sing.) The sisters avenge the assault and regain their honor and freedom, much in contrast to so many others in Greek mythology who share the female fate and get punished on top of it (just think Medusa!) Then again, it is ravaging Gods in most other cases, who get away with it, while Tereus was a mere mortal – maybe those will be punished after all. Or will they?

In North America you mostly see tree swallows, migratory birds that come back every spring. They are amazing aerialists and they are some of the migratory birds most affected by climate change. Shifts in temperature and amount of rainfall since the 1970s have led to breeding patterns that have been catastrophic. Due to warmer winters, eggs are laid earlier, but then the critical period for babies’ weight gain falls into time windows where there are not enough insects to go around to feed them because of excessive spring rains. Not only has the insect population itself steadily declined, but insects hide when it is wet and cool, and the swallow parents stop going to the nesting sites for days on end since they can’t find food. Often it is too late for the fledglings who die of starvation and hypothermia before better weather resumes.

One way to combat that is, of course, to increase insect availability. That means creating more wetlands, no spraying with pesticides, and allowing weeds to grow that really attract insect populations. Dandelions are among the ones that really help fight the insect decline and yet they’ve become scarcer and scarcer due to overeager gardeners and farmers waging war on them (yours truly included before I learned this.) Let them bloom!

In any case, when I see and hear swallows it makes me happy, it makes me think back to the fascination they have obviously held for many across centuries, to the fact how they were integrated into the literary arts. It makes me want to document their beauty to get us all more engaged in trying to do what’s right for the environment.

You can have the chattering of swallows by Janacek.

the song of the nightingale by Stravinsky

or some very sad birds by Ravel, if we don’t get our act together.

Hush, Frida!

I could not believe my eyes. Here I was on the first longer outing in weeks, visiting one of my regular haunts in the domain of nature preserves, and the landscape had completely changed. Acres of open fields and meadows now planted with saplings and strewn with decaying logs – a worthwhile restoration project to re-establish former bogs. I lost it. “Everything is shifting and now even the familiar landscape changes. I can’t take it,” I wailed.

“Yes, you can!” said the wren,”just keep your tail up.” “I don’t have a tail.”

“Yes, you can!” said the sparrow, “just raise your wing and hug yourself.” “I don’t have a wing.”

“Yes, you can!” said the heron, “look down to see the wonders by the roadside.” “Yes, you can!” said the other heron, just look up and see how fires and floods have always reshaped the land.” ” You can’t even get your stories straight…”

“Yes, you can!” said the Kestrel, just sit and enjoy the warmth of the sun.” “I’m here to take a walk, now among these skeletal sights.”

“Yes, you can!” said the nuthatch, knock on wood.” “I agree,” said the pileated. ” “See, you have doubts as well….”

“Yes, you can!” said the geese, too noisy to be understood.

“Yes, you can!” said the turtles, “just slow down and be.” “Yes, you can!” said the harrier hawk, “just speed up and soar.” “I’m not a rollercoaster! Although I life sure feels like it.”

“Yes, you can!” said the swallow, “spring will help.” “One swallow doth not maketh spring…”

“Yes, you can!” said the goose, don’t be a goose. “Selber dumme Gans!”

“Reframe,” said the bald eagle, “there is nothing new under the sun. Go and read this. There’s always Thucydides. The world has made it through, many times over, and the birds are rooting for you. Hush!

“Thucydides, the “The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage” guy? Do I have the song for you……. note, though, it also contains the secret to stop moping: solidarity in action. We are all in this together.

Special shoutout to my kids in California on Lockdown as of today.

Action, Multicolored

I want to sound an optimistic tone to end a week that has seen so many egregious events. Someone else already said it better than I, so I am attaching Walter Shaub’s instructions below. (He is an attorney specializing in government ethics, and was the director of the United States Office of Government Ethics under Obama.)

I am interspersing them with birds from this week, all photographed before, during or after action, showing us how it’s done.

W.S.: “I have some suggestions for folks feeling overwhelmed by the assault on democracy.

First, take action. Any action in defense of democracy. Make a very small donation, even just a dollar, to something; sign up to volunteer for one hour, go learn how to register voters, go to a meeting of a group fighting for democracy; hand out literature; sign up to send postcards encouraging voters to show up and vote (just vote, no need to worry about for whom); sign up to be an election official; ask people for suggestions for other actions you can take.

Second, if that doesn’t make you feel better, do it again. Do it again after that. Do it some more. Action is a key to feeling better. If it’s not working, the remedy is likely more action, not less. Be be action oriented.

Third, bring in the horizon a little closer. Put the future out of your mind. It’s not here yet. Borrowing pain from the future doesn’t help. Instead, bring the horizon in to THIS day. We can control only this day. Let’s ask ourselves what we can do today, and do it!

Fourth, take breaks if needed. Everyone has a bad day. Stay off Twitter on those days. Twitter is a festering wound that rots joy. Get outside, read a book, watch an idiotic comedy you’d be ashamed to admit to watching for fear people would think you stupid, or whatever helps.

Fifth, refrain from posting discouraging comments on Twitter. Don’t add poison to the festering wound. We can take turns carrying the baton, but it makes no sense to fling demoralization bombs at those carrying the baton for you.

Sixth, find sources of inspiration. For some, that might be listening to speeches of strong historical figures, for others it might be reading about acts of courage. Seek out examples of people overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. They exist!

Seventh, again, TAKE ACTION. Any action. It’s not big things that will save us. It’s persistent small actions carried out by one individual, and another, and another and another across the nation. Change comes not from waiting for Some Big Action but from building momentum.

Eighth, believe democracy prevails if we fight for it. Choose belief. Great feats follow belief. I haven’t seen anyone accomplish a thing they didn’t believe they could achieve. Maybe it has happened, but I haven’t seen it. Ignore doubts. Believe! Then, fight for democracy!”

Hey, with sufficient momentum we might arrive at the color blue, in all this darkness….

This will cheer you up as well (and motivate, if you make it through the second movement without tears) – Mozart’s concerto # 23 in A major (K 488) – hope clad in notes.

Goose White

Lucked out this week. I had an encounter with what must have been thousands of snow geese, as close as I’ve ever gotten to them, who were eventually spooked by a bald eagle and took off with a cacophony of noise. It was, honestly, breathtaking. I could feel the airwaves from their flapping wings on my face.

My first serious encounter with geese, other than the real life variety honking their way through my childhood village, took place in a first grade classroom. Called Dumme Gans! (stupid goose) – a typical condescension towards young humans of the female variety in 195Os Germany – by a teacher irritated by yours truly, I had the nerve to reply: “I might be a goose, but I am NOT stupid,” something I was convinced of at age 6. It did not end well.

My second encounter came later during endless years of Latin. The teacher was obsessed with Livy’s History and so we learned about and translated among other things the attempted sacking of Rome by the Gauls (390 BC), all prevented by a gaggle of attentive geese…. here is the translation by Bohn (Book V, ch. 47-49)

The Capitol of Rome was meantime in great danger; for the Gauls had remarked the easy ascent [to it] by the rock at the Temple of Carmentis. On a moonlight night, after they had first sent ahead a man unarmed to test the way, by alternately supporting and being supported by one another, and drawing each other up, as the ground required, they gained the summit all in silence. Not merely had they escaped the ken of the sentinels, but even the dogs, sensitive as they are to noises at night, had not been alarmed. But they did not escape the notice of the geese; for these creatures were sacred to Juno, and had been accordingly spared [by the garrison] despite the scarcity of food.

Thus it befell that Marcus Manlius, who had been consul three years earlier, and who was a redoubted warrior, was awakened by their hissing and the clapping of their wings. He snatched his arms, and calling loudly to his fellows, ran to the spot. Here he smote with the boss of his shield a Gaul who had already gained a foothold on the summit, and tumbled him headlong. The fall of this man as he crashed down dashed over those next to him. Manlius also slew certain others who in their alarm had cast aside their weapons and were clinging to the rocks. By this time the rest [of the Romans] had rushed together, and crushed the enemy with darts and stones, so that the whole bank, dislodged 32from their foothold, were hurled down the precipice in general ruin.

Lesson one: don’t eat geese, they might protect you. Lesson two: remember your history – maybe the keeping of geese could have prevented the real destruction of Rome in 1527 by mutinous troops of Charles V, head of the Holy Roman Empire — pretty much ending the Italian Renaissance. Lesson three: superfluous facts crowd your brain into your late age….

Thoughts of fighting off invaders led, unfortunately, to associations with another bit of news from more recent history: the deployment of elite border agents (BORTAC) to sanctuary cities by the Trump administration.

From the NYT: “…members of the elite tactical unit known as BORTAC, which acts essentially as the SWAT team … With additional gear such as stun grenades and enhanced Special Forces-type training, including sniper certification, the officers typically conduct high-risk operations targeting individuals who are known to be violent, many of them with extensive criminal records.”

We are clearly seeing a militarization of civil society and I wouldn’t bet the bank on the attempts of public figures, like Elizabeth Warren, for example, to get to the bottom of the motivation for these deployments. Now where have we seen the establishment of special (secret) police forces before? Need I spell out a reminder?

Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol agent turned civil rights activist, reported a conversation (it was on Twitter, 2/12/2020) she had with a former senior agency official:

Border Patrol does not believe they are a civilian law enforcement agency. They believe they are kin to the Marine Corps. They do not believe they are accountable to Congress, which is why they have no issues lying to them even while under oath.
They believe they are only accountable to … presidents like Trump. Border Patrol believes it is not required to answer to local police, FBI, CIA or any other law enforcement agency. They claim to be the “premiere” law enforcement agency, superior to all others. They say they will become a “national police force” to be used by a president to enforce laws even among citizens. (Italics are by John Stoer of the editorial board at RAW story, my source for the details here.)

Marching in goose step, proceeding in front of our very eyes. Goosebumps not far behind.

Let them all fly away

And be gone

And in my eternal attempt at balanced reporting – balancing emotionally crappy with pleasurable stuff, that is, here is something in the uplift direction:

One of the highlights of House House’s Untitled Goose Game, the “slapstick-stealth-sandbox” game in which you play a terrible goose wreaking havoc in a lovely English village, is the adaptive soundtrack of Debussy’s Preludes. The playful piano music almost provides a kind of insight into the goose’s mind — the melody plays in quiet, short bursts when it’s up to no good, creeping up on its next victim. When the goose is in full chaos mode, waddling away from the gardener who just wants his keys back, the piano tune plays out in full, encouraging the player to keep up the shenanigans.

Here is the real thing:

YDP – your daily picture

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

YDP – your daily picture

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

YDP – your daily picture

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Bird Photography

Contrasts

Fairytale Friday

All this to prove we cared.

The Exposed Nest

Antidote

Sky

The Sandhills

Fields

Swallows

Hush, Frida!

Action, Multicolored

Goose White